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Amy Poehler Explains What’s Funny About Sweden

By Kathryn Shattuck July 10, 2014 5:23 pmJuly 10, 2014 5:23 pm

Photo

Amy Poehler and her brother, Greg, star of "Welcome to Sweden," a new NBC sitcom.Credit Paul Drinkwater/NBC

Will Ferrell’s wife is Swedish. Aubrey Plaza once dated a Swedish exchange student. Patrick Duffy is a big star in Sweden because of “Dallas.” Illeana Douglas appears in “Easy to Assemble,” a web series for Ikea, the Swedish home-furnishings company. Gene Simmons likes Swedish women.

But none of that would have mattered much if Amy Poehler hadn’t had a brother who lived in Sweden.

Ms. Poehler’s fun and famous friends are sprinkled like so much stardust throughout “Welcome to Sweden,” the new NBC sitcom starting Thursday night that was inspired by the decision of her younger sibling, Greg, to abandon a legal career in New York and move to Scandinavia for love.

In the television version, he plays Bruce Evans, a celebrity money manager whose clients are so aggrieved by his move that they track him down — a framework that allowed the Poehlers to summon their Swedish-connected nearest and dearest for cameos.

Now that the series has been renewed for a second season in its namesake country, where it’s already hit, “we’re kind of like trying to coerce all the famous Swedes,” said Ms. Poehler, one of the show’s executive producers and occasional stars. “We’re hoping that eventually the Skarsgards will let down their Skarsgard and come join us.”

In a recent phone interview from Long Island, where she was filming a movie “with Tina” (Fey, for those living in an alternate universe), Ms. Poehler spoke about funny genes, cultural quirks and how she is not that woman on the screen. These are excerpts from their conversation.

Q.

So it seems that you’re not the only funny Poehler.

A.

Yeah, Greg has always been really funny. In our family you had to earn your place at the dinner table and be witty and able to take some good-natured teasing. And I knew that he always wanted to be a creative person. His life’s path took him to different places. But I’m excited he gets to do that now because he’s really happy.

Q.

But he’s not only writing, he’s acting. Surely that must have been a surprise.

A.

Well, they had this thing [in high school] called moot court, where they would debate fake cases. And Greg was really into getting in front of everybody and performing. I remember being very impressed. He was very quick and smart-brained and had a real facility with language and with numbers. But I also knew that he had that other side.

Q.

What made you think his story would appeal to viewers in both Sweden and the United States?

A.

The heart of the show is a love story. My brother and his real wife, Charlotta, met in New York, and my brother moved to Sweden out of love. So the premise reflects his real-life experience. It’s kind of a combination of a fish-out-of-water story and very specific stuff you’d find in Sweden and the idea of picking up your whole life for somebody else.

Q.

Do the show’s zanier Swedes have a basis in reality?

A.

The interesting, eccentric Swedish people who make up the show are not really based, I think my brother would say, on his in-laws. But there is a specific culture shock that happens. Americans know maybe three big, general broad strokes about Sweden, but not so much the interesting intelligence and dark side and light side. We were both excited to have fun with it comedically.

Q.

What did you know about Sweden before making the show?

A.

My then-husband, Will [Arnett], and I were toastmasters at Greg’s wedding, which is kind of an important job. You have to run the evening and give speeches, and it was a fun, quick cultural lesson in how Swedes express themselves. We certainly didn’t want [the show] to be, “Look at how crazy Swedish people are.” And a lot of the comedy comes from Greg’s inability to synthesize, his inflexibility and stuff. But there are things that are so specific to Sweden, that are so strange for the person who’s never seen them before, that I felt it was really ripe for comedy.

Q.

How does his wife feel about their private life being turned into comedic fodder?

A.

[Laughs] Well, you’ll have to ask her but she’s amazing. Charlotta is awesome. I mean, Swedish women are just badass. Sweden continues to be voted over and over again one of the best countries in the world to live in if you’re a woman. You have relatively equal pay, you have a year paid maternity leave, you have free health care, you have free day care, there’s so much opportunity. So Swedish women are very, very intelligent, empowered, together — and there’s not so much emphasis on marriage. Swedes have a word for when you’re with somebody and have kids but aren’t married. We don’t even have that word as Americans. But Swedes are like, “Oh absolutely, it makes perfect sense that we would have that word.” Nobody really sweats it.

Q.

You’re used to being the big sister. But are you really as nasty to your little brother as your character is to Bruce in the show?

A.

My character is not based on me. She’s an awful celebrity person who’s not very supportive. I would like to think that’s not the case.

Q.

The show is divided between English and Swedish and is heavy on the subtitles. Are you worried that perhaps Americans may find the required reading a little too challenging?

A.

No, I think people are more and more used to that now. But it’s also a great comedic device in that the Swedes get to talk about Greg in front of him, and we get to play around with what people understand and what they don’t understand. The subtitles are a small price to pay for all the fun you get out of all that.

Correction: April 7, 2015An earlier version of the picture caption with this post misspelled the surname of the actress shown. As the post and headline correctly note, she is Amy Poehler, not Poeher.